An Ethical and Theological Appropriation of Heidegger's Critique of Modernity

Unframing Existence

Zohar Atkins

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319969169
• eBook ISBN: 9783319969176
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: World War II

This book is at once a deeply learned and original reading of Heidegger and a primary text in its own right. It demonstrates the relevance of Heidegger's thought in responding to the moral and religious challenges of 21st century existence. It shows that Heidegger's project can be defended against many criticisms once its existential character is taken seriously. What emerges is a powerful exercise in thinking, not about Heidegger, but with and against him. As such, Atkins engages Heidegger as a means of advancing a defense of spirituality in the modern world that holds spirituality itself accountable for its lapses into the mundane. Addressing the most influential figures in recent Continental philosophy, such as Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor W. Adorno, this is a work that will be of timely use to philosophers, theologians, artists, and seekers.

© The Author(s) 2018

Zohar AtkinsAn Ethical and Theological Appropriation of Heidegger’s Critique of Modernityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96917-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Zohar Atkins¹

(1)

The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, New York, NY, USA

Zohar Atkins

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

This book is a work of constructive theology . Its aim is not to say something that the historical person, Martin Heidegger, would agree with, but instead to reframe some of his concerns within an explicitly ethical and theological context. In doing so, however, I also seek to defend Heidegger’s thought against the common charge that it privileges ontology over and above ethics and theology, showing instead that it is most charitably and fruitfully read as an injunction to conduct ethics and theology non-metaphysically.¹ Heidegger’s project, I argue, constitutes not the death of ethics and theology, but an invitation to conduct them in a way that is appropriate to the unique, historically situated, problems of modernity .

One of the primary challenges posed to modern human beings, Heidegger argues, and I agree with him, is an inability to regard the phenomenon of “truth ” non-instrumentally. Another, related problem, is an inability to recognize mortality—and finitude more generally—as the condition for meaningfulness, rather than as a categorically bad thing. And a third, related problem, is a culturally enforced understanding of the human being as “the most important raw material” (der wichtigste Rohstoff).² These problems have far-reaching geopolitical, ecological, and interpersonal consequences. Yet while Heidegger was good on the diagnosis, his own prescriptions remain mostly opaque and digressive. Heidegger’s reluctance to offer direct prescriptions, I argue, is connected to his belief that our obsession with measurable solutions is a symptom of a problem that we can only address once we have undergone a paradigm shift, or embarked on what he calls in his Contributions to Philosophy (1936–1938) “the other beginning” (der andere Anfang).³ Another reason for Heidegger’s reluctance derives from his belief that only a thinking that is embodied and enacted “in-the-world,” and thus, that is not simply restricted to the cognitive or the theoretical domain, can adequately address these problems.

These caveats, however, needn’t be the last word. Instead, they offer a starting point for a response that takes their diagnostic kernel seriously, yet also develops their prescriptive implications. To that end, this book seeks to argue, where Heidegger himself did not, that listening and gratitude are core ways that we can authentically respond to the perils of modernity . Since these postures enact the very non-instrumental relationship to truth that Heidegger advocates, since they reveal finitude as a positive condition of meaningfulness, and since they bring to light the being of the human being in non-subjectivist and non-objectivist terms, they constitute nodes through which genuine ontological transformation can occur.⁴

My argument is organized integumentally around one claim, namely, that ontology is not simply a cognitive or philosophical project, but an existential one. Of course, there is one sense in which “ontology” is a narrow, technical term denoting the thematic study of what “Being” means. And in this sense, ontology can be thought of as a philosophical sub-discipline that exists alongside other sub-disciplines such as “ethics ,” “logic,” and “epistemology.” Yet, there is another sense, and this is the sense emphasized by Heidegger in Being and Time , in which “ontology” denotes not a branch of philosophy, but a basic feature of the kind of being which we ourselves are, namely, “Dasein .” On this definition, ontology simply means “to let Being be manifest,” a claim that Heidegger sharpens when he writes, “[o]ntology is only possible as phenomenology.”⁵ “Phenomenology ,” in turn, means, for Heidegger, “apophainesthai to phenomena—to let what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself.”⁶ Understood as phenomenology, ontology therefore means: to let beings be manifest in their being. Heidegger further argues that phenomenology is not a disengaged study of phenomena, but an interpretative affair in which we ourselves are always implicated. As he writes, “phenomenology…is hermeneutics in the original signification of that word, which designates the work of interpretation.”⁷ Thus, ontology , phenomenology , and hermeneutics belong together, and they belong together because we ourselves are beings for whom our own Being is an issue. As Heidegger writes, “Da-sein is a being that does not simply occur among other beings. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very being.”⁸ Whenever we interpret a situation, we do so by letting some aspect of it come into existential focus (while covering up other aspects of it). Thus, ontology (understood as existential , hermeneutical phenomenology ) is something that, qua existing, we are “always already” doing in every moment. Engaging in ontology , therefore, does not simply involve asking theoretical or descriptive questions about what the word “Being” signifies, but much more critically, coming to an embodied understanding of the phenomenon of Being as it is phenomenologically and hermeneutically filtered through and enacted concretely in our own “being-in-the-world ” in each and every moment.

Thus, while it so happens that the man, Martin Heidegger, engaged in ontology by writing lots of books about “Being,” one needn’t be a professional philosopher or even someone who has heard of the word “ontology ” to be engaged in ontology in a more holistic sense. Consequently, we can simply think of ontology as “care for Being”—Heidegger writes that “the being of Da-asein is care”—where care is meant to denote both something we can’t but do (we are beings whose being is defined by care, according to Heidegger) and as a challenge that perpetually confronts us, and in the face of which our responses must always remain incomplete and questionable.⁹ What this book seeks to examine are the repercussions of understanding ontology in this expansive way.¹⁰ In the same way that my book makes an argument for an expansive understanding of ontology , it also shows that the word “Being” is ultimately not a word that we should worry about defining propositionally. Instead, it is best encountered as a placeholder for that which language cannot but misspeak, a liturgical term that, if turned into a piece of philosophical jargon, risks becoming an instrument of metaphysics , rather than a poetic means toward resisting it. This book sticks to the word “Being” as a matter of convention, convenience, and communicative desire, even as it recognizes that for Heidegger, the term Being became woefully inadequate. At different stages in his development, Heidegger turns away from “Being,” writing it as Beyng (Seyn) and Being (Sein). He also claims that Being has meant different things at different times to different cultures. For instance, for the ancient Greeks, their word for Being was physis.

It is a sign of the richness of Heidegger’s thought that his terminology continued to evolve throughout his career, and that he strove for his language to be original so that it would open up a philosophical experience for himself and for the reader, rather than rest in the certainty of fixed definitions and propositional coherence. Yet the seeming chaos of Heidegger’s vast language—a composite of neologisms (new words) and paleonymies (the repurposing of old words)—also presents many stumbling blocks and red herrings for readers, focusing their attention and labor on deciphering his terms and seeking a unified apparatus which might help them make sense of his “Heideggerese.” Unfortunately, such attempts can have one of two negative consequences: either they entrap the reader in Heidegger’s idiosyncratic terminology, making Heidegger’s insights communicable only to those initiates willing to share in Heidegger’s cult-like language , or else they lead the reader down the unnecessary task of translating Heidegger’s terms into concepts that would be considered acceptable by the standards of analytic philosophy. Both approaches miss the poetic , existential heart of Heidegger’s project; the former fall into the trap of making Heideggerian philosophy a form of “specialized” knowledge, while the latter fall into the trap of divesting the form of Heidegger’s thought from its content.

This book offers a middle way, holding onto core Heideggerian terms, like ontology , phenomenology , Dasein , and Being (terms admittedly distinctive of the so-called early Heidegger) while also showing that the force and import of these poetic terms need not be constrained by Heidegger’s own strictures about them. We can elucidate and follow Heidegger’s arguments for the importance of ontology and the question of Being, even as we part company with his own specifications about how such a question should be asked.

Each chapter attempts to develop the implications of ontology, broadly understood, within and for a particular field. This introductory chapter looks at “metaphysics .” Chapter 2 looks at “ethics .” Chapter 3 looks at “history” and “poetry.” Chapter 4 looks at “thinking .” Chapter 5 looks at the everyday phenomenon of “being needed .” And Chapter 6 looks at “gratitude .” Each chapter seeks to expand our understanding of ontology...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Ontological Ethics as a Restoration of Questionability
• 3. “Dwelling Poetically” in a Metaphysical World
• 4. “The Task of Thinking”: The Fecundity of Listening
• 5. Being Needed by Being, Being Needed by Others
• 6. “Thinking Is Thanking”: From Anxiety to Gratitude
• 7. Conclusion
• Back Matter